Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not have a specific issue because this is not just happening to one individual; it is happening to thousands of individuals. Tens of millions of euro are being conned from customers every single year. There was no financial fraud strategy here until last year. The Hamilton report made it very clear that there was no strategy in place. The Department of Finance is now a part of that since that recommendation last year.

The point I will make to the Minister is that it is clearly not working. It is clearly failing. I say that not to score points because this affects all of us. It is failing because we can see from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, that levels of fraud in the last year have more than doubled. We can see from details regarding banking fraud that two out of three people in this State are reporting that they have been the subject of an attempted fraud. We know that different types of fraud that are taking place are also increasing. There has been an 80% increase in the number of fraudulent scams with people being conned out of €15.6 million. We have information about unauthorised payment fraud rising by 20% in the last year to more than €41.5 million. Some 2,375 individuals were the subject of a form of fraud known as authorised push payments where they were tricked into making credit transfers to accounts controlled by fraudsters up to the value of €9.2 million. These numbers are skyrocketing and it is only going in one direction. Banks in Britain have called this an issue of national security because it has become so prolific. Are we fighting a losing battle? Can the Minister convince me, for example, on what legislation his Department is preparing with regard to any of this?